Monday, October 31, 2005

Busy weekend. Friday night RO and I celebrated our new company by touring the resaurants of downtown Renton. RO and I have fingured out why downtown Renton has soo many great restaurants. Two men, Gino and Armondo, or opening up different restaurants. The cheap lease rates mean these men can hire better chefs and spend more money on the ingredients and staff.

Saturday we went to see the Tiffany exhibit at the SAM. In the evening we went to a halloween party thrown by one of RO's friends.

Sunday we drove down to Gig Harbor to see Mac and Joe's new home. It's a very nice place. Private-- on 2 acres. I like it.

Sunday evening we went to a co-workers wedding. RO danced with many of the women. He's a charmer.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Last night RO and I went out to Olivers for Martini Monday. Martini Monday is 'tradition' just started by Rebecca since she was dumped by her boyfriend and wanted something fun to do on Monday.

It was fun evening, though I drank too much. Martini's are a drinking man's drink.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Side note-- this blog is now five years old! In Internet years, that's ancient.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Maui pics
We are back from Maui. It was a good trip with a few colourful exceptions.

Matt and Sandy arrived Friday night. RO and I arrived Saturday evening.

First colourful exception... Sandy really wanted pot. He's had bad experiences with buying pot on Maui-- he's ended up with oregano before. To make sure he got some good pot, Sandy scoped out the guys on the beach, and befriended this stoner named Soliel.

Soliel was the hippy child of hippy parents. He was basically homeless, living on the beach and off the kindness of strangers. He was about 30 years old, care free-- a simple happy stoner who didn't know any better.

He was also kind of creepy. When RO first met Soliel, he hid anything valuable. He didn't want to give Soliel any ideas.

Soliel pulled out a nail clipper still in the package. He said he lifted it from the corner store next to us. He was very proud of himself.

Soliel sat next to me on the sofa. He pulled his shorts out and then said "That's not good!" He turned to me and continued "I haven't had a shower in 3 days. The salt and sand are bugging my foreskin."

While we were talking about dinner, Soliel pulled some Bologna and chips out of his nap sack. He got a plate. He carefully fooled the Bologna and and made a nice presentation with the chips. As thoughtful as it was, we didn't eat the chips and Bologna. We didn't know where it came from or how long it was in his knapsack.

The evening went on like that. Soliel never realized how strange he came across as.

Eventually RO, Matt and I wanted dinner, but Sandy still didn't have his pot. Sandy kept asking us to wait a few more minutes. An hour later we left Sandy with Soliel and went to Stela Blues (Great restaurant)

We called Sandy a few times while we were eating. Sandy told us that he had drove Soliel to the dealer's house and gave Soliel some cash to go buy the pot. The only reason he knew that Soliel would come back was that Soliel had left his knap sack in Sandy's car.

And hour later Sandy was still waiting for Soliel.

An hour after that Sandy got his pot.

Sandy said that on the way home, Soliel was acting very weird. He couldn't handle highway speeds and kept yelling at Sandy to slow down. Finally Sandy managed dropped Soliel off where he wanted and gave him some cash.

When we finally met up with Sandy, he was being very self-richous. He kept saying "Do you know all the trouble I had to go through to get us that pot! You should support me!" We didn't really want the pot so we all gave Sandy the finger.

We spent Sunday at little Mecena beach. Very beautiful. Every Sunday at sundown a drum circle forms or little Mecena. It was an great party.

Monday we drove to Hana. The road to Hana is very twisty, with lots of one lane bridges and blind corners. It has some beautiful scenery.

In Hana we hung around Red Sand beach. It's a very pristine and quiet beach.

We spend the rest of the time snorkeling and swimming at the various beaches.

Thursday morning we got up at 3am drove to the top of Haleacala, a dormant volcano. We watched the sun rise.

After that we drove back to red sand beach at Hana. A seal was sunny herself on the beach. RO laid down, about 20 feet away from the seal. Later on he told me that if you sang to the seal, it would close it's eyes and stop being so suspicious of every sound.

Before we left on Saturday, we ran into Soliel again. We gave him some leftover beer and snacks.

The trip home was uneventful. I'll post the pictures soon.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

The lease is signed and notarized.

RO & I are about to head off Hawaii for a week. Sandy's dad had a time share in Maui that he couldn't use. i will have fun on vacation knowing that we have a store.

Friday, October 14, 2005

We still haven't signed the lease. We almost did, but our laywer wanted to correct a few incosistancies-- no substantial changes, we just wanted to put the changes we had agreeded to verbally into writing.

When we presented the new lease to the agent, they got very annoyed. I'm not sure why. Maybe they think we don't trust them because we had it reviewed and altered by a good lawyer. Maybe they think we are trying to hide something from them.

The end result is that we still don't have a lease. This is stressfull. A lot of inventory scheduled to arrive and it has no place to go and no store to be sold in.

Over night RO and I talked about a few things we could do to help the process along. He's talking to the agent today. I still have a day job, so I just can't go down there and negotiate.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

RO and I just got back from the lawyer-- we are forming a corporation to run the business under. It's a little nerve racking. It's amazing how fast we are going through cash and we haven't even opened. No one expense is unreasonable, but there are dozens of expenses.

Right now RO and I are figuring out how to structure the shares. It's fairly simple if RO and I are (and stay) the only owners. Things get much more complicated if we take on other partners. It hard to figure out what's fair. What happens if RO and I split? Should the investors loan us money? Should we let them buy shares? How do they get their money out? How much control do we retain?

Right now I'm the president. So I get to sign my name "Brain Dump, President of Corporation."

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Last night the gays of Newcastle got together for a dinner party. The hosts have a beautiful house on the high on the hill.

In a weird co-incidence, over a year and a half ago, before RO and I were a couple, RO had a threesome with the hosts and left his watch behind. Last night the hosts pulled out the watch and handed it back to RO.

Monday, October 10, 2005

Vic and Steven are back from Bali and Hong Kong. Even though they were close to the bombings, they had a great time.
So RO and I are taking a big step together--we are opening a home design/decore store. It's a big leap of faith. RO knows what he is doing though. He has been a designer for years and has run his own store before. The risk is that my pockets are deeper than RO's. I'll be paying most of the bills until things are up and running. And there are big bills-- rent is $5000.00 a month.

There is a lot of work to do. We want to open by Dec 1 to hit Christmas. RO is on the phone constantly to line up the vendors.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Steven and Vic are in Bali. They were about a block and a half away from the bombings. They are ok, but shaken. I got this email from Steven.

We are fine. I hope you got my other email. We were right where this happened today. Very scary. Just wanted to let you know we are ok. We are a bit a ways from this but like I said we were shopping right there today. We were at Hard Rock for lunch and at pool all afternoon.
Very close call. Makes me sick to my stomach. Villa and hotel is great and we are fine.

Hugs,

Steven and Vic

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